Discord

Is there blood in the veins of your young men? Rise up against the bloodless conquest that is turning your people into slaves! The red man was made by our Great Spirit to hunt and to fight, to be free as the prairie wind.
– Sitting Bull to a Crow delegation, 1887

The opening up of the West to American settlement led to frequent conflicts with the region’s Native peoples. Tribal leaders embraced contact at times, for such exchanges made possible trade and political alliances. However, with an ever-growing number of settlers moving west, these relationships increasingly fell apart. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, Native warriors and the U.S. Army clashed in a series of often well-publicized military engagements. Officials tried at times to reach a diplomatic solution, yet repeatedly U.S. authorities either ignored treaties or imposed their own answer to the “Indian problem.” By the century’s end, most tribes in the West had ostensibly been subjugated and forced onto federally controlled reservations. Non-Native writers, artists, and photographers found this conflict a compelling subject, for many believed—incorrectly—that they were documenting the final hours of a “vanishing race.”